


On the streets where once was pity

by zanzibar



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Edmonton Oilers, Gen, I Don't Even Know, I have feelings, teamschultzy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-07 23:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanzibar/pseuds/zanzibar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fans boo the first time he touches the puck, but they also boo the first time Nick touches the puck - apparently as confused as anyone with the combination of Schultz’s on the blue line.</p><p>In which Justin Schultz gets by, with a little help from his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the streets where once was pity

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mr. Blue Sky. Because I can.

It starts almost before the horn sounds in Vancouver. A sinking feeling in his stomach that he tries to push away. It’s different than the frustration that comes with losing, that comes with managed expectations, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this is something else entirely.

The rhythm of an NHL season isn’t hard to fall into. Justin’s played hockey since he was a kid. He’s well-versed in the importance of routines and if anything playing in the big show makes the routines all the more well-defined. It isn’t college, there’s no classes to worry about, he lives with Gags and Nugget and falls quickly into the routine of work and rest, winning and losing, home and away, of game days and practice days.

30-some games in and Justin knows how to do the post-game dance, he gives his quotes, all too familiar with what to say post-loss, with the quiet of a losing locker room and the weariness of another road trip, another loss, another set of back-to-back games. He showers, loads his gear and chucks his bag in the pile and pulls his headphones over his ears.

He’s prepared not to sleep well, the late morning flight to SoCal weighing on his mind as he stretches his toes toward the foot of the bed and watches the shadows of Vancouver traffic drift across the ceiling of the hotel room. But Nugget’s slow, even breathing soothes him to sleep before he has much time to think about it and soon enough it’s all alarm clocks and showers and breakfast and back to the airport.

On the plane he doesn’t get to relax. There’s no movies and headphones and in-flight treats. Instead he sits in the front of the plane with Shelli and waits to be prepped. She’s his favorite Oilers PR person, she’s quiet, but sharp. She rolls her eyes when Hallsy and Ebs are putting on the bromance show and manages to turn Ryan Whitney into something more than a surly 30-something on a team full of kids.

As soon as they’ve taken off Shelli runs him quickly through the questions they expect, an eternity of questions about why he chose Edmonton over Anaheim, why he scorned the city that drafted him, why he thought he was good enough to make his own decision. He’s known this is coming, has expected it, the game all but circled on the calendar. But of all the parts of his game, this is the part that’s the hardest. It’s hard for him to get the words from his brain and out his mouth in some sort of cohesive fashion.

Whits always cracks that he’s unflappably Canadian. And maybe it’s true. But the reality is that he’s more likely to score a hat trick against the defending Stanley Cup champions than he is to say something legitimately inflammatory in an interview. It’s far more likely that he’ll just fumble through an entire media scrum without actually muttering a single complete sentence, then the story will be less about him scorning Anaheim and more about his inability to speak english.

The flight from Vancouver to LAX is 3 hours. It seems short when compared to the eternal flights that they took after the last road trip, but impenetrably long up here running through media training again, answering questions over and over again instead of the soothing comfort of headphones over his ears and mindless TV on the screen of his laptop.

Shelli only grills him for an hour and half. She doesn’t go easy on him, but Justin imagines that there’s a lot of potential for hard-nosed journalistic pressing that she’s holding back on. She presses enough that he feels rattled, she interrupts him and shoves a granola bar at his face like a mic and recruits a couple of the web staff and one of the trainers to ask questions at the same time to simulate more of a scrum than she can alone.

When she finally sets him free he makes his way down the aisle toward the back of the plane. Jonesy raises a hand for a high-five as he walks past and pulls it away just before he makes contact, chuckling while he turns the pages of his book. Nick gives him a raised eyebrow over the screen of his iPad and he shrugs in response.

Maggie is sleeping in the seat closest to the window and Justin slides into his seat, pulls out his phone and headphones and closes his eyes.

Around him everyone is settled in doing their thing, the early afternoon flight means less cards and more reading and movie watching and watching out the window as the landscape changes from frozen tundra to shining seas.

They lose to the Kings. There’s not much more to be said about that.

After the eternal Canadian winter the sun of Orange County feels a lot like being reborn. They play 2 touch and throw the football around and do an easy dryland workout in the parking lot. They have media availability and Justin is reintroduced to the world of hockey in California.

He holds his own. It's informal, and he wonders if maybe, somewhere, someone thinks that this is the easier way. Some quick comments, quick answers, and then back to the sun and sport and his boys. But at the same time, he ends up in his head a little, thinking about his answers the whole time they're coming out of his mouth and all the while wondering if he's saying what he should be saying.

His hands don’t shake until they’re back on the bus. Until it’s over and he’s behind the tinted bus windows and Shelli has given him just the smallest hint of a smile. He puts his water bottle between his feet because the shaking water level is a little too obvious reminder that there are still times where his life motto is fake it till you make it.

Gags stops beside his seat, waiting while Duby and some of the other guys shove at each other for a window seat. Sam's headed toward a seat further in the back, but pauses a little apart from the other's who are waiting and rests a heavy hand on Justin's shoulder just for a minute, while he's waiting for the aisle to clear. That one moment, the steady calm that Sam seems to exude all the time, as much as anything, brings him back down to earth.

Once they’re in at the hotel in Anaheim there’s some down time. Carefully managed, scheduled, routine downtime, but downtime nonetheless.

Justin often thought college would be a good indication of how tired it was possible to be. He’s not sure what the difference is, but tired now means something different than it ever did in Madison. In college tired was a given value of class, hockey, homework and partying. In the NHL tired is a given value of his entire body falling apart at the seams and his mind occupied with tendencies and goalie scouting and just how far to pinch without giving up the farm and using this time on his entry-level deal to prove just exactly what he can bring to this team.

Sometimes, he leans his head back against the wall and wonders how someone like Smytty can do this for years and not completely collapse from exhaustion.

At the Ponda the fans boo the first time he touches the puck, but they also boo the first time Nick touches the puck - apparently as confused as anyone with the combination of Schultz’s on the blue line.

The game ends up being a complete and utter shitshow and god if he could figure out a way to pull it together, to bring them from moments of brilliance scattered amongst a plague of mediocrity. But instead they lose, they don’t play better, they don’t play worse, they just play as it seems they always do, close, but never close enough.

There's one, beautiful, glorious moment. Down 2-1, when he crashes toward the net and finds himself at the top of the blue paint with Hallsy rifling a beautiful cross ice pass. But in what could probably be a metaphor for the entire season, Hiller lays down the pads and Anaheim clears the puck away.

On the bus he fools around on his phone, consciously staying away from twitter and returning texts and checking his email between the rink and the hotel. He takes his keycard and a fistbump from Horc on his way off the elevator. Nuge is somewhere behind him, stocking up on snacks probably or swapping DVD’s with Hallsy before they bunk up for the night.

Justin dumps his bags on the bed and heads straight to the shower. He spends 10 minutes standing under the water, being alone, for once, trying to forget, to move on, to remind himself that he lived through it. He survived. Win or lose, it’s over for now.

When he comes out, sweats and soft tshirt have replaced his game day shirt and tie, the mini-DVD player is hooked to the TV, Hallsy’s lanky frame is stretched across the bed closest to the window, his feet are bare and his shirt is untucked and unbuttoned and Ebs is curled tight against his side, Jordan’s brow is furrowed in a way that Justin recognizes as self-deprecating post-game analysis. The spread of Taylor's fingers are dark against the bright white of Jordan's tshirt. Their legs are entwined, socks against bare feet, mesh shorts and bare legs sliding against dress pants. Justin envies the simple codependent affection they share, especially for the comfort they can bring each other without a word.

Nuge pulls a tshirt on and walks between the other bed and the wall. He raises an eyebrow at Justin and Justin shrugs and dumps his wallet, Gatorade and phone on the table between the beds.

Taylor glances over to make sure they’re settled before reaching one freakishly long arm out to switch off the light, he reaches across the space between the beds to fist bump Schultzy lightly and presses play on the remote. The movie is something familiar that Justin can’t identify. He’s seen it before and the plot is light enough not to require much of his attention. He lets the noise wash over him while he drifts and the motion from the screen flashes behind his eyes. Ryan’s weight is weirdly soothing next to him in bed and the low rumble of Taylor’s laugh from across the room is the last thing he hears before he drops into sleep.


End file.
